London

I couldn't decide about going on the march, I thought about it for days. Of course, everyone knew it would do no good and in my life I had never (like many) protested about anything, just had a moan and got on with it.

However on the day I was there, the proposed hunting ban was only a part of the reason I went. The government (especially DEFRA=Department for the Elimination of Farming and other Rural Activities) were doing such a good job I felt the need to make my point. It wasn’t just about hunting; cattle and sheep were being taken hundreds of miles for slaughter, the mishandling of the foot and mouth, closure of country post offices, transportation to France of live horses, the list went on.

We had driven down on the Saturday, occasionally being passed by or passing mud-splattered 4x4s and cars with Countryside Alliance stickers, the start of the flood to come.

So there I stood at the start, on that Sunday morning, one of many. When I was a lad, my father went every Tuesday to the union meeting to pay his subscription, up the stairs in that low beamed smoke filled room they sat and talked of better times, staunch Labour to a man but where had it gone wrong? A sense of betrayal filled the air, these memories of childhood flooded back as I shuffled along in the crowd. I knew that it was going to be a big demonstration but I was amazed at the number who took part both actually marching but also those standing on the sidelines watching. I particularly remember a party of French supporters complete with hunting horns that had come over to show support.

We passed 10 Downing Street and I stopped for a moment in front of the black iron railings, I raised two fingers. A policewoman clad in body armour with a machine gun smiled at me and shook her head. "No," she said, so we moved on, past the Cenotaph and then under the finish with the banner and digital display recording the number completing the route. I cannot recall what my number was, I wasn't interested anyway; I'd made my point.

We had some banter with a policeman on Westminster Bridge, asking him to thank us for his overtime, we persuaded him to take our picture. As we moved away, his final words were prophetic. "It will be banned," he said, "but unenforceable."

And so with the help of the Parliament Act and after using 700 hours of scarce Parliamentary time came the end of hunting. Blair didn't need anything to take us to war though and when the opportunity came to bolt him from Number 10 he was voted in again.

My Last Meet

The date from which hunting was to be banned was published; my son and I decided to attend a meet on the fell above Ambleside a few days prior for our last one. It seemed fitting as at least three previous generations of my family had followed and hunted hounds over the same ground.

We walked up onto Brock Crag via Nook End Farm, a long slog I must have done hundreds of times before and never easier or more interesting the number of times I do it. It was a bitterly cold morning, with a blue sky and bright sunshine, in fact as I recall there was some snow on the tops a few hundred feet higher than where were sitting on top of the crag, looking down into the valley beneath which stretched away down Lake Windermere glinting in the morning sunlight, with Morecambe Bay also sun lit drawing the eye in the far distance.

It wasn’t really a day to remember, in fact well summed up by a friend who later described it as “a day of good views of the fells and a lot of shouting.” A fox went to ground beneath where we sat on Brock Crag and the hounds hunted another over into Rydal before returning into Scandal with the fox going to ground on the fell side above Sweden Bridge.

The wind was bitter, I have always felt the cold but that day was particularly bad. Decades have gone by since the day I sat at the sheepfold (see Will it Bolt?) as a lad just up the valley, but all the old memories of being cold came back. My son who, despite my advice, was wearing a shirt and jacket only, sat there determined not to admit he was frozen as we watched the hunt, laying low on the grass in the lee of a large rock out of the cutting wind. To his credit my son did not complain, but when the coffee ran out and it looked like the day was over he did not object to my suggestion to drop in to the track which led back to the car and set off down at a good pace. On the way down the late afternoon light took on a magical quality briefly allowing photography available only rarely and the picture of the stick (shown) seemed a fitting end to my hunting life.

There was nothing new about folk who disagreed with hunting protesting about or observing the proceedings. I remember on one occasion in the 60s “Chappie” beating a hasty retreat from a house near Waterhead when the lady who owned the house stopped him putting a terrier into a drain in the rhododendrons as she was anti-hunting. In 1929 there was a meeting at Caldbeck to commemorate the writing of the song “Do you ken John Peel”. This piece (not the whole article), from the Scotsman 18th October 1929, takes up the story ...

An Unsympathetic Spectator

During the early part of the rollicking days proceedings Mr. Henry B Amos secretary for the League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports, walked unrecognized in the crowd. He told a reporter that he slept overnight in the same house as the huntsman of the Blencathra Hunt but had not revealed his identity. “I am here gathering information for propaganda purposes, not to protest,” he said. “If I made myself known to the crowd it is quite likely that I should be thrown into a ditch. I have had narrow escapes from this treatment before when I have attended meetings of the Exmoor Staghounds."

Thanks to Jim for the above.

Aftermath

A few days later the Ban came quietly in, one minute hunting was legal the next it wasn’t, bolts of lightening did not descend from the sky nor plague strike the land, the hands of the clock moved slightly and the deed was done.

We had driven up the M6 to spend the night prior to the new era in Ambleside, so as to be at the “lowse” the next morning after a lay in, rather than the early start we would normally have made in order to get there for 09 30.

The Opening Meet for the Coniston under the new law was at a pub called The Ship on the south of Coniston on the Torver road.

We drove to the pub early found a place to park on the narrow road and joined the crowd by the pub.

It was a good turnout and a feeling of suppressed rage was evident. The box containing the hounds arrived, but even their barking sounded depressed.

Roger Westmorland (the MFH) climbed above the crowd and gave what I considered to be a good speech about an unjust law and how in the course of time it would be repealed, but in the intervening period, he quite rightly said, we must operate within it. A raffle of various articles was then held to raise funds for the hunt, with a rather nice picture going for a three-figure sum. At the end of the raffle he continued. “This morning,” he said, "we would take hounds for a walk on the fell.” He asked for everyone to behave under the new law and we all set off.

We drove back to Coniston and up the Walna Scar Track and followed the line of cars, to a parking place on a piece of level ground. It was a few years since I’d been up the track, the last time I walked long sections of it, Bill Birkett (my climbing partner at school) had bought a 125cc BSA Bantam, and on it we "putt putted" around the roads on our way to and from the crags. The drawback was that on any hill even of minor gradient it would not carry two plus the climbing gear so I did rather a lot of walking and carried the climbing gear I suppose many a mile. It was nice to ascend the hill in the car with the heater going, even with some god awful unknown music of my son’s blasting out of the CD player.

We parked with all the others and got out of the car; despite the sunshine and blue sky it was bitterly cold with the fell tops covered in snow. We all milled around, not really knowing what to do or for that matter what to say. Michael (the Huntsman) appeared with the hounds and after a brief while set out for the fell. He went around by a piece of ground called The Bell and the wonderfully named Willy and Dixon Scrows. Hounds wanted to hunt for the fox but Michael kept them under control and after about an hour of wandering the fell he called it a day. We had not broken the law and had exercised our democratic right to follow hounds within the New Law. I felt I had made my point.

And so after over three hundred years hunting in Lakeland ceased, now hounds hunt within the law, but it is not the same. Who knows when or if hunting will come back, no Political Party is committed to it and only the Conservatives will allow a free vote on the matter, this is not the certainty of repeal some think, it is a “free” vote where an MP is not compelled to follow a given party line and votes or should according to conscience and knowledge of the subject, if any. One thing is for sure though, whichever way the vote goes, the predations of the foxes of Lakeland on lambing fields and poultry houses will continue and farmers will still control or attempt to control the fox population, with a variety of means, some humane and others perhaps questionable. The restoration of hunting will go some way to keeping the fox population under some kind of control, eliminating some foxes and scattering others, who move away from a valley for a while, when it is visited by the hounds.

Conclusion

It wasn't difficult to find the fox; the stench of decay was quite overwhelming. Nearby in the 19th century the "old men" (quarry expression for men who had "gone before") had driven a heading into the fell in search of some mineral or other. They had thrown the spoil down the fell side and it was towards this that the fox was heading when it died. It hadn't moved far from the place where the bullet had smashed into its fore shoulder, you could see what had happened after the bullet had hit it. Badly wounded the fox had tried to make it to the spoil heap where it could rest up for a while in the boulders, but death had beaten it and now it lay covered in flies. No one will ever know how long it took the poor bugger to die, but its final seconds or minutes must have been spent in agony. Long ago I came to the conclusion that for every clean shot there is perhaps one that isn’t and this was a graphic example.

Of the shooter there was no trace save a cartridge case or two on the fell side and some quad bike tracks. In the foxhunting history section of this site, I talked about "the bailiff refusing to keep the hounds". Well the modern bailiff in 10 Downing St had done the same thing and this was the outcome. There had always been shooting, but I'd never seen it on the high fell before.

The fox will always be the predator especially at cubbing time when it's easier to take a lamb or two than spend the night looking for small animals or worms and beetles. The farmer 'wants rid' and really isn't in many cases bothered about the means. There is more cruelty in 'control driven underground' than one carried out in the full glare of the nation. In all my years following hounds I never saw a fox limping away to die.

But it wasn't about the "foxes and animal welfare" was it? Most of the antis didn't care; they hated the horses, red coats and the trappings and rituals of the chase. They kept well away when the foot and mouth hit Lakeland though, and the culls were taking place with the attendant horror stories of cruelty before and during the cull and the pyres with their thick acrid smoke and stench drifting across the landscape.

I covered the carcass up with stones and climbed up the spoil heap to the heading.

********************

In chronological terms this marks the end of my ”hunting memories”. I followed hounds just under 50 years, the trail laid by the drag man is not the same as hounds following a hunted fox with all its wiles and tricks; you have probably realised by now even if you have briefly looked at this site that it never bothered me if the hounds killed or not. My family were not farmers and the visit of a fox caused us no problems financial or otherwise. I loved watching the hounds. The “music” of the hunt echoing through the woodland and bouncing off the crag, mist rolling down the fell, sunlight on the bracken beds, the flight of a Peregrine and the soaring of the Buzzard, the feel of hot sunshine on my back as I lay above the borran on a warm summer afternoon watching the cubs at play, the banter, the frosty morning and at the end of the day the singing in the pub. You see, I have heard Chappie’s “Whoo Git away” echo from the rocks, watched Joe Weir cast his hounds into the fell brest, laughed with and been laughed at by Johnnie Richardson and made Pritch Bland smile.

It isn’t the same anymore.